Internet users have grown increasingly reliant on searching tools to locate information online. Information providers interested in providing information to those users, e.g., government agencies, educational institutions, product manufacturers, online stores, banks, to name but a few, thus face the challenge of making their information easily accessible and searchable.
Some information providers rely primarily on third-party search services (often referred to as “search engines”), such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. These third-party search services index information on web sites accessible through the public Internet, including information on web sites operated by information providers. These third-party search services allow Internet users to search within indexed information for desired content.
Other information providers use private indexing and searching tools to supplement or replace third-party search services. An information provider may, for example, use such tools to allow users to conduct a search that is confined to that information provider's web site. Similarly, the information provider may allow users to narrow the scope of a search to a particular portion of the web site, such as a particular database, e.g., a database devoted exclusively to technical support inquiries or billing inquiries. Such databases are commonly referred to as knowledgebases. These indexing and searching tools may be custom tailored to suit the particular characteristics of the information provider's information. Ultimately, these tools are intended to enable users to search with more efficiency and/or ease than is typically possible with a third-party search services.
One such private information indexing and searching tool is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,171,409 (hereinafter the '409 patent), the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference. This patent discloses organizing information as a plurality of responses to possible queries. For each response, a Boolean expression that may be applied to possible queries is formulated and stored. When a query is received from a user, the stored Boolean expressions are applied to the query. Responses associated with the expressions that are satisfied by the query may be presented to the user.
One limitation of many searching tools, including the above-described third-party search services, is that they require users to formulate a query with a requisite degree of precision, e.g., by stringing together a sufficient number of search terms. However, users often formulate queries that are imprecise, incomplete or otherwise ambiguous. For example, a user using a searching tool on a banking web site may issue a query simply as “rates?” In this case, the user may have intended, for example, to search for information on interest rates for a savings account, interest rates on a credit card balance, or interest rates on a mortgage loan. The ideal searching tool should provide search results satisfying the user's information needs, notwithstanding potential ambiguity in the user's query.
A searching tool that does not try to address potential ambiguity in the user's query may fail to satisfy the user's information needs in different ways. For example, a searching tool may provide too many search results to the user, e.g., by providing search results for all types of interest rates to a user who is only interested in interest rates for mortgages loans. In this situation, the user may fail to locate the relevant information within the set of search results provided. A searching tool may provide insufficient search results if, due to ambiguity in the search query, matched results fall below a confidence threshold imposed by the search tool. A searching tool that simply guesses at user's information needs may provide only irrelevant information, e.g., by providing search results for interest rates for credit cards to the user who is only interested in interest rates for mortgage loans. In any event, the search tool fails to provide search results that satisfy the user's information needs.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved search methods, software and devices to detect when a user query is potentially ambiguous, and to provide search results matched to the user query, notwithstanding potential ambiguity in that user query.